With a Republican like Arianna Huffington, Americans have little cause
to criticize Bill Clinton.

If the compassionate conservatism of George W. Bush was an irritant,
then Huffington's constant proselyting is turning into a major pain in
my neck. The self-crowned compassion queen has been tireless lately in
chronicling how America's poor have been forgotten while we're all enraptured
by dot com billionaires made continually richer thanks to inflated stock
prices.

In recent essays published in Salon, Huffington complains that Americans
have forgotten about poverty and inequality despite large numbers of layoffs
in the 1990s, low-paying jobs, CEO pay rates, child poverty and a myriad
of other socioeconomic ills. She even goes as far as lauding former New
York governor Mario Cuomo and other Democrats -- members of a party which
struck down a promise from its platform in 1996 to "help those who
cannot help themselves" -- for attacking Reagan's relentless optimism
and economic record in the 1980s.

Huffington, an admirer of the anti-Jeffersonian and friend of big government
Teddy Roosevelt, has also had enough of the current field of political
candidates for continually promoting America's current economic strength
in their campaign.

"Don't worry, they're saying, we're not going to ask you to even
think of community and civic responsibility or anything that is not in
your direct, economic self-interest -- and, somehow, a nation that we
can be proud of will materialize," wrote Huffington in a September
1999 piece in Salon.

Huffington's rant over want is all a set-up for her real target, the
Republican Party. Although she takes the Democratic Party to task, her
real anger is directed at the GOP. Huffington blames the party for essentially
gutting the American Community Renewal Act (ACRA) -- sponsored by Reps.
J.C. Watts (R-Ok) and Jim Talent (R-Mo) -- and charitable tax credits
proposed by Rep. John Kasich (R-Oh) and Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind) which would
have allowed taxpayers to funnel some of their money to charities.

Even the media earn some ire from America's queen of compassion, with
studies proving that the fifth estate has cut back its reporting on poverty,
homelessness and inequality and given President Bill Clinton a "free
pass for his 'don't look down' economy." The better to write more
profiles of Bill Gates or Steve Case no doubt.

It's obvious that Huffington is no fan of the economics favoured by many
conservatives and popularized by the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s, one
that arguably is responsible for the prosperity Americans are enjoying
today under Clinton. Her solution -- one which of course involves government
intervention -- will only exacerbate the problems she is spotlighting
and is no different from the distributionist politics promoted by people
like Al Gore or Bill Bradley.

The charitable tax credits proposed by Kasich and Coats merely allowed
a taxpayer to decide where $1 000 of their income tax will go, something
that Huffington says will instantly turn Americans into educated poverty
fighters, not allowed them to have kept it and done what they saw fit.
Watts' and Talent's ACRA, a combination of tax incentives, public housing
reforms and regulatory relief, would have merely addressed the needs of
just 100 neighbourhoods.

If Huffington really wants to address the issue of poverty, what America's
poor needs more than Roosevelt-brand government intervention is more of
the free market policies of Reagan that she clearly dislikes. The numbers
bear this out.

Under Reagan's brand of economics, the poorest 20 per cent of Americans
saw their income rise 12 per cent from 1983 to 1989. The percentage of
families earning less than $15 000 dropped. The U.S. Treasury's Office
of Tax Analysis reports of those in the bottom-fifth income bracket in
1979, 65 per cent jumped at least two income brackets during the 1980s.
Average family income grew 15 per cent from 1982 to 1989. The numbers
of Americans below the poverty declined by 3.8 million people between
1983 and 1989. Families with incomes between $10 000 and $50 000 a year
experienced a higher percentage of growth in net worth than those in the
top fifth income group. Twenty million new jobs were created with 87 per
cent of those being higher skilled and higher paying.

Critics will argue with all of this prosperity the decade of greed lived
up to its name, but that turns out not to be the case. Charitable donations
by individuals rose from $64.7 billion (in 1990 dollars) in 1980 to $102
billion in 1989, an increase of 57.7 per cent. As a percentage of income,
charitable donations rose from 2.1 per cent in 1979 to a record 2.7 per
cent in 1989. So much for Masters of the Universe stepping on the average
man.

What Huffington needs to understand is that the poor in America need
more freedom and less in the way of touchy-feely handouts and capitalism
is the answer because it flows from freedom. Her unspoken belief is that
capitalism should serve the public benefit, that it should be harnessed
to provide the maximum good -- at least as defined by her -- not a rare
belief among conservatives, whether a so-called compassionate conservative
like Huffington or an economic protectionist like Patrick Buchanan.

The evidence from the Reagan years suggests, however, that unharnessing
capitalism from the bonds of expectation has the effect of serving the
public good -- allowing the people to act to improve themselves. Enlightened
self-interest -- greed as Huffington would call it -- is tolerated by
people like her because of its perceived benefits to society. It's time
for her realize that allowing capitalism and that self-interest to flourish
free of impediment from politicians would solve many of the problems she
continues to rail against.

And then a nation Americans can be proud of will materialize.

Steve Martinovich is a freelance writer and the editor of Enter Stage
Right.